Blank Spots on the Map - by Trevor Paglen (Paperback)

About the Book

Paglen's research into areas that officially don't exist leads him on a globe-trotting adventure into a vast, undemocratic, and uncontrolled "black empire, which he chronicles in this adventurous and often chilling road trip through the underworld of the U.S. military.

Book Synopsis

Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition.

This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world."

Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots.

Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.

Review Quotes

aTrevor Paglen set out to map the darkest corners of the U. S. national security apparatus. Heas done that and more. The result is a fascinating, deeply troubling, and absolutely essential book.a
aAndrew J. Bacevich, professor in international relations at Boston University, retired colonel in the US Army, and author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism"
aTrevor Paglen gets into the black heart of Americaas black sites. There is no better guide to this great American mystery. What goes on inside these bases will determine the future of warfareaand who we areafor the rest of the century.a
aRobert Baer, former case officer at the CIA and author of "See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIAas War on Terrorism"
a"Blank Spots" is an important, well-researched, and insightful expose that opens a window into the black world of secret operations. Paglenas conclusion that aour own history, in large part, has become a state secreta is both a warning and a call to arms. It is time to heed the warning and take up arms.a
aJohn Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"
aA chillingly literal tour de force. Paglen doesnat so much fill in the blanks as trace their outlines and give their shifting shapes a density that says as much about the future of democracy as it does about the dismal confines of the black world.a
aDerek Gregory, Professor of Geography, University of British Columbia
aLiving among us is an entire shadow industry of secret careers, unmarked flights, and razor-wired compounds evoking stereotyped images of the Cold-War Soviet Union. In what is still the world's most open society, Paglen adroitlyexposes this dark geography. His book is fascinating and necessary.a
aLaurence Smith, Professor of Geography, University of California Los Angeles
aSome of the worst crimes in the American landscape are hiding in plain sight, and nobody has ever pursued them more thoroughly or explained them more chillingly and engagingly than Trevor Paglen. What he is doing is important, fascinating, and groundbreaking.a
aRebecca Solnit, National Book Critics Circle Award Winner and author of "Wanderlust"

About the Author

Trevor Paglen, Ph.D., has published numerous research papers in academic journals and his writing has appeared in The Village Voice and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. He is the author of I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me and Torture Taxi. He is also an internationally recognized artist who exhibits frequently in major galleries and museums around the world. He lives in Berkeley, California.